Belmont’s Rick Byrd Was Always a Thorn in ETSU’s Side

The announcement Monday Belmont head coach Rick Byrd was retiring is a loss for college basketball.

However, it may be a gain for the rest of the Ohio Valley Conference and anyone who would recruit middle Tennessee or Indiana, where much of the Bruins’ roster is now comprised from.

Back in ETSU’s Atlantic Sun days Byrd’s Bruins were a major thorn in the side of ETSU.

In successive years Belmont defeated ETSU in the Atlantic Sun Tournament, handing the Bucs perhaps their most painful losses of the era.

First, Belmont trounced Murry Bartow’s zone with nine first half 3-pointers that turned the 2007 Conference Championship in Johnson City in to an lopsided 94–67 rout early. The only drama in the second half was how many autographs Vince Gill, a Bruins fan who’d made the trip from Nashville for the game, could sign.

The following season was the famous Doug Sirmons game, when a late technical foul call sealed a Bruins victory.

All in all ETSU posted just a 3–15 record playing the Bruins in Atlantic Sun competition. Bucs fans naively thought maybe, just maybe they could lure Byrd to Johnson City, but that was never going to happen.

Why leave a superior program for a lesser one?

Which was frustrating for ETSU fans. Belmont was still in the NAIA as recently as 1996. Old Timers from the ’50s remembered ETSC beating the Bruins, obviously pre-Byrd, in…